Experts say radiation is all around us — from the rays of the sun to the granite beneath our feet. [...]

Charlie Zender, a UC Irvine professor. [...] said even those who work inside places like San Onofre would have to double their exposure [to around 100 millisieverts per year] to be at an increased risk of cancer. [...]

Zender suspected that if any radiation was released, it was less than a chest X-Ray [...]

But radiation can come to us in unexpected ways. Zenger said potassium in our bones and carbon in our flesh also emit radiation.

In fact, Zenger said, sleeping next to someone adds the equivalent of eating one banana each day, neither of which are considered harmful.

Yeah. Uh huh. The workers are stealing spent fuel rods by the ton. Right. They’re putting them in their lunchpails and taking them home.
What a load. Get real. And your ridiculous “spherical geometry” and “critical mass” crap is assinine. Please, don’t infect ENENEWS with your BS. We try to deal with reality here.

TEPCO has to use mob recruiters to get workers at the many sites in Japan that are having problems. Probably ‘recruiting’ doctors and staff to work at Fukushima, too.

The place is crazy right now, very little security to stop the big shots from doing whatever they want, including sending a few truck loads of rods right out the gate. Spent fuel is valued many times higher than gold on the black market.

If cooling keeps pellets from melting into a critical mass, then heating lots of pellets in a spherical mold would cause . . . ?

Nuclear industry is impotent to stop theft or the black market, now those radioisotopes are everywhere.

Japan government has no leverage any more; they are sitting in the back seat as nuclear criminals are in the driver’s seat. How else does the permissible exposure limits increase for young children?

To any new readers from the San Onofre area, be sure to read far enough in comments to see that our intrepid readers have discovered that the professor above isn’t credible. You’ve come to an excellent source for nuclear/radiation news!

Also, you need to know this: very credible studies have shown that as little as 2mSv of radiation per year has been shown to increase cancer risk. Fairewinds.com has a great video explaining this and directly referencing the National Academy of Sciences BIER VII report and the study of nuclear workers the supposed expert above ignores:http://www.fairewinds.com/updates

NBC in Los Angeles is an OandO – owned and operated station, meaning it is controlled by its parent company, which is General Electric. Are you surprised that such "hormesis"-like propaganda is coming from this station? Anything to lull the entertainment industry titans — who have the money and power to really make a difference — into thinking it's all safe, all good. And whether "scientists" like the numnutz they interviewed really believe their views or not, they really really really think it's awwwwwwsome! to get on TV, so they'll whore themselves out accordingly. Hit the blogs and comment, especially on NBC's site. Also, call NBC in Burbank, ask for their news department, and try to get through to the assignment editor, then demand a balanced report instead of a nuke industry hand job.

Zender is an earth scientist, not a radiation expert. He studies global warming:

“Zot!Wire: Global warming
Charlie Zender studies the effects of airborne chemicals, clouds and aerosols on climate change. Dust from the world’s deserts changes cloud properties, rainfall locations and ocean carbon fixation, making it a hot topic in Earth science. Zender studies plumes of dust, industrial soot and biomass burning with a global climate model that predicts the sources, dispersal and fate of these particulates. These plumes can change climate after they land by darkening and melting snow and ice.”

Oh I have an old, retired art prof that used to keep flasks of whiskey in her desk that she’d pull out and drink from at least 3 times per class. She’d be corrupt enough (or at least we could get her drunk enough).

The “expert” –should take a good look at all the emissions/gases released from 3-11-2011 to 02-03-2012 THEN figure out how much damage all the gases have done to the atmosphere –and if it has accelerated GLOBAL WARMING, OR GLOBAL COOLING –Or Climate change. Since he is a “plume expert”–we can show him a LOT of Plumes, and emissions..got them all avaiable to allow him to do something productive in his field. He should not be saying “radiation is safe ” at 100 mSv –what about infants, children, teens? Anyone with immune compromised health. There is NO ONE SIZE FITS ALL with radiation. Also, the TYPES of radiation –one type is not as deadly as a second..and its usually not just one type..its a mix..

After we all stop eating bananas, we better stop sleeping with anyone and everyone.. No more sharing a bed..

Too much radiation.. I wonder how much of that dangerous radiation in the person sleeping next to was PUT there by the 2,300 nuclear bomb tests, and the huge number of yearly ‘normal’ radiation releases from the 400 nuclear power plants, DU weapons shot off, and uranium mining operations, spent fuel reprocessing facilities, military nuke dumps?

Is it really? I've had a dozen C/T scans since my car accident and three spinal surgeries. Not to mention MRI's x-rays, gastric empty studies, (where they feed you radioactive eggs and make you lay on a table being x-rays every half hour for 4 bloody hours!) I've had 6 of those. Dear Lord,….the list just keeps getting longer!

No,…no one should ever sleep next to StillJill! (She's hotter than a truckload of nanners!)

1. There are no facts whatsoever delivered. What kind of radiation was released, how much and where did it go.

2. The “reporter” didn’t identify herself – every TV news reporter identifies themself in a piece. If they don’t, it’s a sure sign of a “planted” story.

3. Zender says every nuke industry prepackaged line in the business. They film him in his lab. He says he thinks any radiation released is a less than an X-ray – another nuke industry line – and not what any legitimate scientist would ever say… They would want the facts. This guy looks to me to be bought and paid for by the industry – upon further review he’s a global warming “expert” , so I know he’s either an idiot or bought and paid for.

Anybody that’s a UC Irvine alum or a UC alum ought to call up and complain about the practices of this “scientist” working for the nuke industry.

Unfortunately both global warming and harm from radiation are both very real and are threatening our possibility to live on this planet. However, it is the nuclear power plants which are significantly causing global warming. How many hot fuel rods have been dumped into the ocean. The water used to cool nuclear reactors increases the heat of the water poured back into our rivers and the ocean. We know that nuclear reactors cause heat. How else can they generate electricity?

James.. go find the PBS special on ice.. and the cores that were drilled. The ice cores went back hundreds of thousands of years and showed that the planet, indeed, goes through a cycle of heating and cooling.. Warming is indeed proved to happen on a regular basis.. but, what also is proven and shown in these core samples is that man has had an impact. These ice cores show carbon, they show nuke accidents.. and they occur to document and prove an advance in normal warming patterns since man has become industrialized.. I don’t remember if it was a front line or nova piece, but, fascinating and worth looking for.

interesting and when you read how fast temperatures can change.. oh boy..

Suddenly, possibly in less than five years, average temperatures, which were slightly cooler than today’s, plunged by about 27°F, returning the world to near-glacial conditions… lasted about 1,300 years before it returned—just as abruptly—to the temperatures typical of the period immediately preceding it.

Perhaps I should qualify my statement, although I said I don’t want to get into a global warming argument here – it is OT for this forum

The earth warms, the earth cools. I haven’t looked at it for a couple years closely, but I can tell you that through the years 1999-2010 – very little change, if any happened.

The oceans haven’t risen. Temps went up, and down, but ended about where they started. Ice increased significantly overall, however the 10,000 year trend of decreasing ice in the arctic continued.

Although man does have a significant impact on the environment, and C02 counts have risen slightly – it’s effect on temperature is tiny or insignificant. The whole C02 panic is made up.

And furthermore – that as an environmental issue is miniscule when compared to Fukushima. This nuclear problem really does threaten mankind – where global warming doesn’t.

I have all the facts. I’ve seen dozens of puff pieces which were just as flawed as tepco status reports. But you cannot get any real information until you look at the source date for yourself – then you get the real story.

Sorry I’ve studied that issue as much as I’ve studied Fukushima. I’ve debated the best minds on the topic and I’ve never lost – although there was a time – before I looked at the source data when I actually believed… That’s enough about Global Warming.

Dear Anne: Thank you so much for these photos. This IS a related topic, as you already know, because (my words, I know not necessarily your words) there will be no change without critical masses of non-billionaire humans willing to immediately radically change/gain control of toxic greed-based totally non-transparent (despotic) power status quos. Humans must also immediately understand and decisively act on BIG PICTURE changes syndromes already occurring, which each individually have the power to soon cause human extinction. The three biggies in order of immediate consequences, up to and including extinction are: Nuclear ionizing radiation fallout cataclysms, anthropogenic thermal maximum and related anthropogenic mass extinction event. The thermal maximum and mass extinction events are the first humans have created; but are the world’s sixth in the past 500 million years (about that time that plants left the marine environment, allowing all other more complex terrestrial life to form).

Pallas (with caring respect) I have to say honestly given the reality of the scale of the warming there is really little man can do to change the cycle we HAVE to ride through.

I’m of the belief the world has an amazing story full of hot and cold times. Birds then no birds. Oxygen based then CO2 based. Mammoths then no Mammoths. People no people then people again. Who knows the whole of the story really?

If we gave it everything we’ve got everyday for the rest of our lives we really wont stop it (warming) from happening. I have to accept that which helps me be aware in the first place to care about poisons like Fuku and dying animals by the wagon load…. something is horribly wrong out there and I call it POISONS and TOXINS.

How you frame your point Ann is provocative in a positive way for me. I never considered the simple presence of the rods, tubes, barrels and assemblies of the thousands (millions?!!) of nuclear materials and garbage…. would CUMULATIVELY cause an increase to the temperatures. You know, for all the ocean dumped barrels in the oceans, to my knowledge we have never gone back, scientifically even, to retrieve and examine what happens to nuclear materials loaded in a barrel left to sit at deep-water oceanic pressures etc for decades … we really don’t know what the composition is and we should. Maybe I’m taking your point a step further on a thought tangent, but in doing so I think objectively you offer something important at least to me to consider.

Nuclear and uranium products MUST be returned back to deep underground where it is safer. I have said it before and I say it again. We have always coexisted with uranium but everything was in its right place. We can`t and shouldn’t try to control it.

NBC -Nuclear Baloney Corporation – presents a specialist with a sub-specialty, neither of which are medical, radiological or have anything to do with operation or oversight of a nuclear plant.
Happy, smiling, regular folk and a Scientist to boot.

Dear Or-Well that’s a good old fashioned, realistic and valuable deconstruction of the source the state is using to create a disinforming and mollifying social construction about the nuclear cataclysm. More people need to use their critical thinking like that. thank you.

I think it’s funny that they spend the entire video about “average radiation exposure”.

The fact that the average person receives 4 ms per year – true; and that 75% of that comes from “natural causes” – well not exactly true – 75% comes from background radiation which includes natural and manmade sources; and that the other 25% comes from elective sources – X-rays and such – true

BUT THIS IS FOR AVERAGE EXPOSURE – NOT UNUSUAL EXPOSURE FROM A NUCLEAR PLANT LEAK.

THAT WOULD BE TOTALLY UNACCOUNTED FOR IN THE AVERAGE SCENARIO

So essentially the video is trying to divert your attention from the accidentally exposed to the average person.

It’s akin to saying “the average passenger in a motor vehicle is comfortable” and saying there’s no need to worry about being injured in an accident. Folks, we got past that kind of logic 30 years ago in motor vehicles – that’s why we have seat belts and airbags and other safety systems in cars – because even though accidents are rare, the consequences are high – and can be reduced.

This is the entire problem with the nuke industry – they deny accidents ever happen and won’t even consider them…. – it’s literally like a child putting their fingers in their ears screaming “I can’t hear you!”…

Dear James: I like your analysis, “It’s like saying the average automobile passenger is comfortable; therefore, there’s nothing to worry about.” I’m going to steal that one in conversations if you don’t mind.

Guess what? “All four of the plant’s steam generators and their tubes are about two years old, installed after being delivered to the West Coast by the Japanese manufacturer of the generators, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.”

Dear Gotham: Me either. I got tricked into it at first, got contacted by a bunch of people, many of whom I like; but many of whom I didn’t after not seeing these for a number of years in most cases. Some I’d rather not have had contact with any longer. I then realized, doy!, Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, et al., are obviously either created by or are really convenient and great tools for CIA-FBI (or other, we have 18 covert orgs and uncountable corporate “marketing” private info snooper/sniffers) type spying on citizens, particularly after martial law further descends having much the same inhibitor of relevant information movement with a brightness dulling effect as the ever descending clouds of diverse aerosolized Fukushima fallout particles. I followed the procedure for getting off facebook permanently, but apparently my page still exists though friends wonder why I haven’t “updated” the page in more than a year when they find me in person or over the phone.

There’s apparently never any danger from a nuclear reactor’s release of radiation, EVER.

Even when four reactors melt down and out. And a couple spent fuel pools with hundreds of tons more fuel burn up.

This reminds me of a story from a US WW2 vet. A bad officer severely browbeat and degraded a private, while in England. The guy had big ears, and this officer made him feel extremely low about it, in front of everybody.

That officer ended up abducted, with a parachute strapped on, and put on a plane, and pushed out over German-occupied territory.

This is what I wish would happen to nuclear propagandists, who lie to their fellow citizens, and cover up the danger and damage of their precious industry, for its paychecks. I wish they’d be pushed out right over Daiichi, and they could think about their position on the issue as they look for a place to land as they float down.

Dear Amer: In fact, I am waiting for the fascist despotic government status quo pro-nuke profiteering shills to begin advocating swimming in spent fuel pools to cure whatever ails us. As the petroleum folks bade us do during the early Pennsylvanian state discoveries by same of NE PA petrolium deposits on Seneca Indian property; hence, it’s being named “snake” oil. An alliterative contraction and lexical gap of sorts. After all, the natural radiation level in the resort hot springs dotting the Japanese archipelago are high. This is locally given as the reason these waters are “healthful”. Human delusion apparently is boundless as other ENE’ers have noted. In California, we’ll have Sutro Baths (seawater baths near San Francisco) but instead people will be swimming until they are very woozy without any hair and nails, skin sluffing and the like, in the San Onofre seaside baths.

I was going to call out Zender as a useless, pathetic shill but others have beat me to the punch.

Likely release is tritium but any release suggests both defects in steam generators AND fuel rod cladding. Tritium can pass through many materials but not through zircalloy if it is undamaged.

All reactor cultures lie IE: are lying sacks of shit: where are the isotope analyses? (I dunno, ask Tepco.)

If there are other isotopes such as Iodine-131 or Cesium/Xenon/Krypton there are leaks in both the steam generators and broken fuel rods. The core would need to be decontaminated which means fuel load and water removed.

It must be assumed that other leaks exist in San Onofre plumbing and pressure control systems.

the reactor operator must be having a cow: $700 million for steam generators from Mitsubishi (cut rate price!!!) now it is possible all four will be taken out of service and replaced AGAIN. Add to this the steam generator problems indicated in Illinois.

Wow, good catch James! The following link was posted by one of his students who rated him on RateMyProfessor.com; I include it here as a fascinating glimpse into the character of a man who’s demonstrably intelligent enough to know that the statements he’s made regarding radiation risks are untrue.

The link wasn’t about the student ratings. It was posted on the rating site by a student, to give some insight into the character of the person being discussed; I included it a point-of-interest to my fellow enenewsies. I found it particularly interesting that he writes poetry about his children, while on the other hand promoting an industry that seems hell-bent on destroying their future. I don’t get it, and probably never will.

True, although it disturbs me to think I could have ever looked so wantonly loathsome. Seriously, it looks like he not only swallowed the canary, but then sucked all the eggs dry, and then had the temerity to complain about his bellyache…

I wish someone asked him about the German studies of people living near nuclear plants and the very high rates of cancer….He looked like he was laughing at himself…maybe even he thought what he was saying was ridiculous.

I wish all the Californians living within the zone this plant affects with its ‘harmless routine’ emissions, would all take it to small claims court, where attorneys are not allowed, where the maximum award is $10,000.

I can’t imagine how it would not be possible to line sample or grid sample the area around the plant for 150 km out, and show all kinds of isotopic pollution, obviously from this plant, and increasing with distance toward it.

If Joe Blow soused up his neighbor’s house and lawn with radioactive gases, possibly dust, and daughter products, police would come and arrest him, and lawyers would sue him.

Why should it be any different for a nuclear plant, which could easily be shown lying about dozens of things, in all likelihood.

The lying nuclear pollution perpetrators would not have any advantage of an army of lawyers representing them in court.

And not only pollution levels increasing with distance toward it, but with correlation to prevailing winds.

They could save some of the best cancer and other disease evidence for giant lawsuits before a jury. A whole bunch of individual cases, not allowed to be class actioned, so that each and every one would be like a possible spear to the eye of the octopus.

OK, Zender.
I’m gonna quit eatin my daily banana and cram it up your smug, smarmy, lyin ass.
Nobody but you would lick their lips and grin insanely as you say shit that most folks will not only believe, but will use as a talking point in their comfy denial of actual nuke plant dangers.
You might just be the most dangerous little prick I’ve seen yet.

Hi B&B at the rate we are going it’s a disaster BY design! lol but not really.

I’m glad deniers weren’t around when it was discovered that CFC’s were burning a HOLE in the ozone layer. They didn’t deny SCIENCE then and we even got a world wide ban on CFCs. Too bad they believe Inhofe and his ilk over real climate scientist. I can only imagine where it will lead us…

I’m enjoying cesium chees & fuku’ed leafy greens in Trier, SW Germany. Luckily, no deniers around here left, but of cours that doesn’t help if the majority of worldwide hardcore-emitters is willing to leave the consequences to their children…
I try to do what I can.

Nobody has ever explained to me why there should not be a hole in the ozone layer during a pole’s winter and for a time afterward. The sun does not shine there, and to the extent it does, does so at a very slight angle. Ozone doesn’t last long, only 25 seconds or so at sea level, more higher. The sun has to shine, UV rays have to hit the oxygen to create ozone. So there should be holes over each pole. The CFC’s were heavier than air, too. Only convection or updrafts could get them up.

So a law was passed, chemicals changed, and WA-LAA! All of a sudden the problem is over and done, even though the ‘experts’ claimed it would be hundreds of years before the ozone returned to normal.

What happened, was an industry got a big bunch of money for new chemicals, new AC parts, etc., and a measure of global government was created.

The same thing for CO2. We don’t even know where the atmosphere really came from or comes from. We do know a single volcano can and has in the recent past belched more CO2 than man ever did in all his industrial activity.

Actually the problem wasn’t “over and done”. The ozone hole never went away – just the pubicity about it went away. There was never any scientific linkage between CFC’s and the ozone layer anyway.

And what they did was crazy. Have you ever noticed that home air conditioning systems have gotten huge lately.

Well – they wanted to save the ozone, by banning CFC’s – freon in particular. Now freon is essentially chlorinated propane gas – it’s cheap and easy to make and it worked pretty good in the refrigeration cycle.

So they banned the sale of new systems that use Freon – not the sale of freon itself, but the systems that use it. The problem is that the replacements didn’t work as good. So the new systems needed to be approximately 30% larger (and use 30% more energy) just to cool to the level that the old freon systems did.

So now the systems need to be physically larger and cost more – the electricity usage goes up by 30% (or the cooling goes down by 30%) and our need for power generation skyrockets. Now here’s the nuke tie in – you don’t want to build more dirty coal and fossil fuel plants to save the environment – you want more clean nuclear fuel – right??? Of course you do.

BTW – now the HVAC companies can upsell you a new “green” system. Dupont can patent the new refrigerant – when their old patent from the General Motors days had long expired. And they get to make lots of the new stuff. And – we can make it illegal for non-certified people to work on AC system (even though they are simple systems) and the service technicians make more money – EVERYBODY GET A PIECE OF THIS PIE.

Everybody except the environment and the consumers. Now we have to make bigger systems that use more material resources – we need more power plants – which – well you know where that leads us, and we can no longer fix our own AC units. It’s a crazy solution – it absolutely had the opposite environment effect – but lots made tons of money…

Peas – using the term denier means that you have bought the rhetoric hook line and sinker.

It was specifically coined to make you feel superior and suppress open debate on the topic.

I’ve seen that video you point to – essentially he uses the old heaven argument – if you don’t believe in God and there is a heaven, you have a chance of missing out, if you do believe there’s no chance of missing out, and all you wasted if there was no heaven is some time and effort believing in God.

It works in the case of God, but doesn’t work as well as global warming. If you believe and there is no global warming, the cost is too high in my mind. He also says that if we don’t do anything before we know for sure – then it will be too late. Not true in the case of global warming.

You see he made the video before two very important pieces of data were revealed. #1 piece of data is that global warming hasn’t really happened since 1998, despite continuing increases in carbon – that kills the theory right there on the spot.

But the second thing that guy didn’t know is that the climategate documents (not the emails – which were heavily publicized but somewhat innocuous) – the files – which were very extensive and not many people actually looked at them – these files prove that the leaders of the global warming “movement” were intentionally fudging the data to create AGW out of thin air. The emails were just a much easier thing to write about.

If you looked at the source data all along, you knew this, but very few folks did that. I encourage you to look deeper. Just like with nuclear power – the propaganda you’ve been fed for many years is not necessarily correct.

He’s a Prisoner of Zender!
Trapped in his mind,
drugged by his training
and Discipline fine,
hidden in Academe,
tempted to think
that he can speak
quick as a wink
uttering hogwash and
no one will blink,
and that it’s correct
to speak to the proles
of matters nuclear
playing dual roles
for which he’s not equipped:
he’s one fine and dandy
professorial twit.

Charlie Zender, a UC Irvine professor. [...] said even those who work inside places like San Onofre would have to double their exposure [to around 100 millisieverts per year] to be at an increased risk of cancer
I agree if you do not take it internally. The radiation though is high then you state, we know that TEPCO & government reports of radiation level is one tenth the actual. Also the workers are adults not youths, young are more sensitive, radiation is 10 times as dangers, [1]their whole body is closer [2]their nose is closer to ground [3]they walk on soil more than adults [5]workers at plant are exposed for 8 hours youth more [6]the worker wear some protective gear [7]the workers do not eat radiated food products [8]youths play on ground and handle soil then rub their faces and put them in their mouth [9]youth do not change their close as much as adults [10]the youth are exposed in their house [11]in time they will have several generations above them radiated all their lives [12]workers are exposed up to retirement or changing jobs [13]adults organs are larger than youths so can take more hits of recitation [14]youths sleep together and are then close to a radiated matter [15]youths handle radiated pets more than adults [16]youths play were water is in lower areas like ditches were radiation has been washed too [17]youths exposed to radiation from the roof especially if it is flat [18]youths at school are in classes radiating each other [20]youths walk to school on a…

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